The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-12-15

p0tuleuce Will grow up INTO mlSaHtHTOpy.
Childish rebellion will develop into the
lawlessness of riot and sedition. If you
would ruin the child, dance to his every
caprice and stuff him with confectionery.
Before you are aware of it that boy of six
years will go down the street, a cigar in
his mouth, and ready ON any corner with
his comrades to compare pugilistic attain
ments. The parent who allows the child
to grow up without ever having learned
the great duty of obedience and submits
sion has prepared a cup of burning gall
for his own lips and appalling destruction
for his descendant. Remember Eli and
his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas.
A second error prevalent in the training
of children is laying out of theory and
following it without arranging it to
varieties of disposition. In every family
you will find striking differences of tenn
permanent. This child is too timid, and
that too bold, and this too miserly, and
that too wasteful; this too inactive,
and that too boisterous. Now, the
farmer, who should plant corn and wheat
and turnips in the same way, then put
them through one hopper and grind them
in the same mill, would not be so much of
fool as the parents who would attempt
to discipline and educate all their children
in the Same manner. 1t needs skillful
hand to adjust these checks and balances.
The rigidity of government which is nee
essary to hold in this impetuous nature
would utterly crush that flexible DISPOSE
ton, while the gentle reproof that
would suffice for the latter would, when
used on the form sr, be like attempting to
hold champing Bucephalus with reins of
gossamer.
The third error prevalent in the train
ing of children is the one-sidsd develop
ment of either the physical, intellectual
or moral nature at the expense of the
others. Those, for instance. greatly mis-
take who, while they are faithful in the
intellectual and moral culture of children,
forget the physical. The bright eyes
half quenched by night study, the cramped
chest that comes from too much bending
over school desks, the weak side resulting
from sedentariness of habit, pale cheeks
and the gaunt bodies of multitudes of
children attest that physical development
does not always go along with intellectual
and moral
How do you suppose all those treasures
of knowledge the child gets will look in
shattered caskets? And how much will
you give for the wealthiest cargo when it
is put into leaky ship? How can that
| bright, sharp blade of a child's attain
ments be welded without any handle?
What are brains worth without shoulders
to carry them? What is a child with
magnificent mind but an exhausted body?
Better that young man of twenty one
go forth in the world without knowing A
| from z if he have health of body and en-
ergy to push his way through the world,
| than at twenty -one to enter upon active
| life, his head stuffed with Socrates, and
| Herodotus, and Bacon, and La Place, but
no physical force to sustain him in the
| shock of earthly conflicts. From this in
| finite bunder of parents how many have
| come out in life with genius that could
have piled Ossa upon Pelion and mounted
| upon them to scale the Heavens, and have
laid down painting with physical ex-
| haustion before mole-hill. They who
might have thrilled senates and mar
| shaded armies and startled the world with
the shock of their scientific batteries,
have passed their lives in picking up pre-
scriptons for Indigestion. They owned
all the thunderbolts of Jupiter, but could
not get out of their rocking chair to use
| them.
Fire in the furnace heats the house or
| drives the steamer; but, uncontrolled,
| warehouses go down in awful era h before
it, and in few hours half city will be in
black ruin, walls aud towers and
churches and monuments. You must &C
| company the education of the intellect
| with the education of the heart, or you are
rousing up within your child an energy
which will be blasting and terrific. Bet
ter a wicked Ounce than wicked philoso-
pher.
The fourth error often committed in the
training of children is the suppression of
childish sportfulness. The most triumph
was that of Scoville Haynes McCollum.
| A few days before that he was at my
house in Syracuse, and he ran like a deer
and his halloo made the woods echo. You
could hear him coming a block off, so full
was he of romp and laughter and whistle.
Don't put religion on your child as a
straight jacket. Parents after having
for good many years been iostled about
in the rough world, often loose their viva
city, and are astonished to see how their
children can act SO thoughtlessly of the
earnest world all about them. That is a
cruel parent who quenches any of the
light in child's soul. Instead of arrest
ing it's sportfulness, go forth and help
him trundle the hoop, and fly the rite,
and build the snow castle. Those shout.
ders are too little to carry burden, that
brow is too young to be wrinkled, those
feet ara too sprightly to go along at a
funeral pace. God bless their young
hearts!
Now is the time for them to be sportful.
Let them romp and sing and laugh, and
go with rush aud hurrah. In this way
they gather up surplus of energy
| for future life. For the child that walks
around with scowl, dragging his feet as
though they were weights and sitting
down by the hour in moping and
grumbling l prophecy lite of utter mani
| ton and discomfort. Sooner hush the
robins in the air till they are silent as a
bat, and lecture the frisking lambs on the
hillside until they walk like old sheep,
rather than put exhilarant childhood in
the stocks.
The fifth error in the training of child.
hood is the postponement of its moral
culture until too late. Multitudes of chill
dren, because of their precocity, have been
urged into depths of study where they
ought not to go, and their intellects have
been overburdened and overstrained and